Legendary action director John Woo is making quite the Hollywood comeback. He’s currently working with actor Joel Kinnaman (“The Killing,” “The Suicide Squad“) for his new western pic “Silent Night” that is already in production, but another high-profile project will see the Hong Kong filmmaker take a crack at remaking one of his seminal movies from the 1980s.
Peacock has officially announced today that Woo will direct a new film based on his Hong Kong action classic, “The Killer,” a film that follows an isolated assassin who pines for a woman he blinded during a previous hit and is one of the more action-packed films the director made before heading to Hollywood to make things like “Face/Off.”
Not only that, but the film from Universal Pictures will debut on the streaming service sometime in 2023 which will also see the LeBron James origin story “Shooting Star” and the church choir drama “Praise This.”
Woo’s new film is being referred to as a “reimagining” which likely means they’ll be attempting an English version, potentially with western actors. This wouldn’t be the first remake for Woo, as he turned his 1991 film “Once A Thief” into a short-lived Canadian series that debuted in 1996.
Here is the logline of the original 1989 film that starred Chow Yun-Fat:
Mob assassin Jeffrey (Chow Yun-Fat) is no ordinary hired gun; the best in his business, he views his chosen profession as a calling rather than simply a job. So, when beautiful nightclub chanteuse Jennie (Sally Yeh) is blinded in the crossfire of his most recent hit, Jeffrey chooses to retire after one last job to pay for his unintended victim’s sight-restoring operation. But when Jeffrey is double-crossed, he reluctantly joins forces with a rogue policeman (Danny Lee) to make things right.
“The Killer” was so popular in the 1990s, thanks to the VHS rental market, that even director Quentin Tarantino made reference to it in “Jackie Brown.” It’s considered one of the better Hong Kong action flicks that employed well-crafted shootouts alongside Woo’s 1992 flick “Hard Boiled” and his “A Better Tomorrow” trilogy from the 1980s that could rival westerns of the golden age.
We’ll have to wait on more plot and casting details on the film based on “The Killer” as they are announced.